Recent advancements in the field of video surveillance systems, machine vision systems in the field of robotics and automotive industry, and consumer electronic (CE) devices are largely due to rapid technological developments in image processing techniques. One such image processing techniques is image segmentation, which may refer to the partitioning of an image into several regions based on certain rules. Although various segmentation methods have been known to separate foreground objects from the background of an image or a video, the complexity, accuracy, and computational resource requirements vary based on the objective to be achieved.
In conventional video segmentation methods, a common approach to segment a foreground object is to subtract a pre-determined static background image from a newly captured image. The remaining pixels after subtraction may be labeled as foreground. The pre-determined static background image may be a completely static background image generated at the start of the video segmentation process. A user may capture a plurality of images of a background scene with an image capture device and take an average of the plurality of images to generate the completely static background image. Therefore, during generation of the pre-determined static background image, the user may need to assure that no moving objects (including the user) are present in the captured scene. Further, if the image capture device is displaced from its original position, the static background image may need to be generated again, which may be cumbersome. Currently, another approach to segment the foreground object is to use depth information from a depth sensor. However, because of the severe noise present in most depth sensors, the boundaries of the foreground object regions obtained that rely heavily on depth values are often not smooth. There may be some undesired holes within the foreground object regions as a result of the invalid depth values from the depth sensor.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of described systems with some aspects of the present disclosure, as set forth in the remainder of the present application and with reference to the drawings.